The term “search engine” is generally meant to refer to a server or a collection of servers dedicated to indexing Internet web pages, storing the results and returning lists of pages that match particular queries (e.g., key word queries). A server is a computer, program or process that responds to requests for information from a client. On the Internet, all web pages are held on servers. This includes those parts of the search engines and directories that are accessible from the Internet. The indexes themselves are normally generated using spiders. A spider is that part of a search engine that surfs the web, storing the universal resource locators (URLs, i.e., the web addresses) and indexing the keywords and text of each page it finds. At present, some of the major search engines are Altavista™, Excite™, Hotbot™, Infoseek™, Lycos™, Northern Light™ and Webcrawler™. Note that the popular site Yahoo™ is technically a directory (a server or a collection of servers dedicated to indexing Internet web pages and returning lists of pages which match particular queries—directories, also known as indexes, are normally compiled manually, by user submission, and often involve an editorial selection and/or categorization process), not a search engine. The term search engine is nevertheless often used to describe both directories and search engines.
Generally, search engines return results based on key words or search strings that are supplied by users. Results are typically found by matching the key words or search strings with metatags present in the hypertext markup language (HTML) used to encode the web pages of the target web sites. Results are also often ranked according to the quality of the match between the metatags and the search strings. Depending upon the search algorithms employed by the search engine, the more frequently a terms is used as a metatag, the more likely it is to be assigned a high ranking in the returned results. Owners of web sites therefore often repeat metatag terms numerous times (often using common spelling variations and similar terms) so as to ensure that their respective web sites will gain a high ranking when an Internet user executes a search. While this is beneficial for the web site owner (as it is likely an internet user will tend to select highly ranked results of a search), it is not necessarily beneficial for the user, who may be mislead into selecting a less than desirable web site by such tactics.
With respect to present advertising systems on the World Wide Web (WWW), they may include a customized advertising repository server connected on the WWW, which can be accessed by a registered user through his or her browser either by clicking on an icon, or by inputting the specific URL address of the particular server which stores that user's advertising repository. By providing the customized advertising server with personal profile information the user can control what advertisements will be available for the user's viewing and access. However, this only relates to users visiting a website to view ads. This scheme does not help users control the volume of advertising they receive (e.g. via email, cursor-selectable objects within browser, hyperlink in user browser to advertisement). Furthermore, this scheme does not help merchants target users for receiving advertisements.
Also, in current internet systems, consumers are able to select advertising based on subject filters. This allows consumers to receive only advertising that pertains to subjects of interest. However, it does not allow control of the volume of advertising delivered. Either the consumer must deal with an uncontrollable volume of advertisements, or the advertisement deliverer must editorially limit the volume of advertisements in ways that may not be suitable to the consumer. Similarly, merchants may target consumers to receive advertising based on personal profile information submitted by the consumer. The consumers may further be rewarded for reviewing such advertising. However, once again, the user is unable to control the volume of advertisements delivered. Furthermore, the merchant is unable to determine if adequate rewards are being offered to the user.
With respect to controlling user access technologies currently exist whereby a user attempting an internet operation may be recognized through a “cookie” previously provided to the user's browser during a previous interaction, or the user may be recognized through inputting an ID previously obtained. However, such schemes do not differentiate between automated users and human users. What is needed is a better method of differentiating between automated users and human users attempting an internet operation (e.g. sweepstakes entry, accessing an advertisement, creating an email account, etc. . . . ).